Since starting This American Bite, Yosef has evolved into a Kansas City based kosher food blogger. On his blog is where he welcomes us into his kitchen, where he highlights flavor when cooking from scratch, seasoning a plate, and breaking bread. Yosef believes that though it is not always easy to express gratitude in person, a home cooked meal says it all.

On Being Kosher:

My wife and I are Jewish, and we keep a kosher home. I didn’t really start off to be a kosher blogger in that niche, but inherently my recipes are kosher, and that means that we don’t mix dairy products with meat products. It means our meat is all certified kosher and I’m personally gluten-free and dairy-free completely. So there’s just a lot of synergy with kosher cooking when you’re already doing a dairy-free diet.

I’ve been eating kosher most of my life. I think about since four or five years old, we’ve been keeping kosher in my family.

One of the big no-no’s is mixing the dairy and the meat product. So there’s no biscuits and gravy if there’s butter involved. So I’ll cook with a lot of dairy alternatives. Kosher slaughter has a lot of rules around how the animals are treated while they’re alive and while they’re being slaughtered, as well as there being restrictions on which meat products we eat, and which fish we eat. There’s also humane treatment of the animals as well. So pork is out of the question, and a lot of shellfish is out of the question, lobster, things like that we don’t eat at all. But, I think there’s a lot of traditional brisket and roast chicken on Friday night for the Sabbath. So we don’t go hungry, I’ll tell you that.

I tend not to get overwhelmed with kosher. Produce, fruit, vegetables, beans, legumes, rice, that’s generally kosher. Fish and meat, primarily meat and chicken, there’s a certification. But in the United States it’s very easy. Most Trader Joe’s you’ll go into will carry kosher chicken, maybe kosher meat, depending on what region you’re in. And if you’ve ever been in a store and seen a little symbol, which is a “U” with a circle around it, that’s the kosher symbol.

On the Food Culture in Kansas City:

Kansas City has an awesome food culture. There’s a lady called Jill Silva who writes for the Kansas City Star. And their food blog actually just won a national award for their coverage of the local food scene.

Our kosher barbecue festival brings people in every year from as far as New York, LA. We have the entire country covered. I have a very good friend from Northern California who isn’t Jewish, doesn’t keep kosher, and he flew in to be on my team. Friends of mine from Israel flew in and are on a team with us, and it’s such a culinary adventure. We’re very lucky that Simon Majumdar from the Food Network comes out every year to our barbecue festival, and he either emcees it or judges it. And if you read his book — I think it’s called Fed, White and Blue — he actually talked about a Friday night dinner that he had in our home, and then the weekend of the barbecue festival.

On Competing in the Barbecue Festival:

My goal at the barbecue festival really isn’t to win. We’re there to have a great time, and my teammates and I have really embodied that. You’re competing in an official Barbecue Society sanctioned competition, and they’re looking for something specific. They’re looking for the smoke rings. They’re looking for the flavor, the texture. And then you kind of got this rogue team brining turkeys. So our competition has a brisket round, a ribs round. I think it’s brisket, ribs, chicken, turkey; obviously no pork because it’s a kosher barbecue festival. To follow the laws of kosher, everyone’s meat is provided for them, which is very atypical.

Everyone has the same supplies. Everyone has the same ingredients list that you can request from. Everyone has the same smokers, same gloves. We have non-Jewish teams, non-kosher teams that participate, and it really does level up that playing field a lot. And the first year I competed, my buddy Chris and I made a terrible brisket. We fell asleep as the water pan ran out. It was disastrous. It wasn’t even good for jerky. And you know, we got better year on year.

Some of what I’ve learned from barbecue, I now apply in the home kitchen; the low and slow technique, using a dry rub, covering your meat. You can do that in an oven winter or summer.

The Pressure Cooker:

I’m a big fan of Food52, Amy Kritzer of What Jew Wanna Eat, I think she’s been on your show; Liz Rueven of Kosher Like Me. And two others that I really admire are Chanie Apfelbaum of Busy in Brooklyn, and Melinda Strauss of Kitchen Tested. And all those people I consider are friends of mine. They’re awesome people. Whitney Fisch of Jewhungry. Jewhungry the blog is an awesome blog, and her writing style is so cool, so much fun, and Jonathan Margolin of Toque & Scalpel. His photography is outstanding. I’m jealous of his photography skills.

Who do you follow on Pinterest, Instagram, Facebook or Snapchat that make you happy?

I know I have specific people on Instagram that I love, but I love exploring the hashtags on Instagram, and discovering other people cooking like me, who, you know…after I hashtag my own photo, I’ll go look at who else is using that hashtag.

What is the most unusual or treasured item in your kitchen?

My wife bought me this beautiful wine rack made out of an old wine barrel. And it’s just this beautiful arch cut out of a wine barrel. It’s the centrepiece of our table all the time. I love it.

I would love to connect with everybody on Instagram, and I would love to answer questions and just connect. If you have recipes, ideas you’re not sure about, Instagram me, Facebook me, Tweet me, email me. And if you visit my website you can get emails for my new recipes as well.

Noha was born and raised in Egypt where food was such a huge deal that it felt like a member of their family. She moved to Australia with her husband in 2013 and is where she currently lives. On her blog Matters of the Belly is where Noha shares with us the food she likes to cook and eat, and the memories that they evoke, hoping to inspire us to put on our aprons and to pick up our wooden spoons.

On Growing Up in Egypt:

I come from quite a big family. And to us, in Egypt, food is so central to everything we do — all the events, all the birthdays, all the special occasions — everything is centered around food, and so it’s been a massive part of my life growing up. Every social gathering, every holiday, everything has a special food for it, and we always looked forward to that and my parents were very big on making things themselves rather than buying.

My sisters and I learned to cook and to make things and to get excited about food from a very young age, especially my younger sister and I. My older sister was not as interested. Food has always been wonderful and a big part of growing up for us.

The norm is that food is a big deal, but it’s not necessarily made from scratch, if that makes sense. Lots of people rely on bringing food in, buying food, not really making it, and our family was very much interested in gathering around making it, so making an event out of making the food and spending time together in the kitchen, and planning it, basically, and doing it all together. So that’s where ours was, I think, a bit special.

On Egyptian Cuisine:

It’s not very widespread, not like, for example, Lebanese food which you can find almost anywhere. Egyptian food is very similar to Lebanese and other foods of the area where it’s very simple food. It’s very highly reliant on vegetables and beans and things like that because they’re staples and they’re very cheap. Most normal families in Egypt would be on the poorer side and they’d want something to sustain them and keep them going through the day that doesn’t cost that much.

Most of our most famous national dishes are actually vegan or vegetarian without even…not on purpose, but it just happened to be that way.

Lots of big flavors, quite a bit of spices. Our meats are very simply prepared, nothing fancy, when we do have meat, but yeah, that’s pretty much it, sums it up.

When I think of Egypt, the spice that comes to mind instantly is cumin, instantly. So cumin and coriander are very, very widely used in Egyptian dishes, as well as cinnamon, I would say.

Cumin and coriander always go together. Cinnamon, it’s separate, it goes by itself, more like maybe some nutmeg and things like that, more warming dishes. It’s often added to desserts as well. Lots of desserts are flavored with cinnamon.

On What a Typical Egyptian Meal Looks Like:

The typical Egyptian meal, that if you walk into any Egyptian home, you’ll see has to be a massive plate of rice on the table at all times, and there’s probably bread too. Our Egyptian pita bread is really, really special. It’s a bit different to the types of pita bread that you see that are nice and smooth and white. It’s more whole grain and it’s very rustic, and it has the bran of the wheat covering it, all of it, so it’s a very special bread.

These are always there, and you’ll find some sort of stewed vegetable always, with tomato sauce stewed slowly, like green beans or okra or even peas. And if it’s a day where the family is having meat, then there’d probably be fried chicken or maybe grilled kofta meats, like beef kofta or maybe even lamb. Lamb is quite popular as well. That’s your typical Egyptian meal.

On Must-Have Dishes for Visitors to Egypt:

I’d say there are three dishes that cannot be missed for anyone visiting Egypt, and they’re quite easy to get because they’re widely available on the street. Most Egyptian food, you’d need to go into an Egyptian house, in a home, to eat them but these three… The first one is koshari, which is, pretty much, I would consider it the fast food of Egypt because it’s what people eat during work for lunch and typically have on their working day. It’s made up of, again, rice and lentils, cooked lentils, cooked chickpeas, a spicy tomato sauce, and fried onions on top. People usually even have it in a big plastic bowl or even a bag. I think that’s popular in Asia, as well, where you can get drinks and food in plastic bags. That happens a lot. So koshari is a must, must have. It’s a very spicy and very filling dish while being a vegan one as well.

The other two that usually go together are ta’amiya which are Egyptian falafel. They’re very similar to most of the falafel you know, but they’re made with fava beans rather than chickpeas, and they’re very, very green inside. So you’d take a bite and they’d be bright, bright green inside from all the herbs. And these are often eaten with ful which is, I would say, the number one national dish of Egypt, which are very slow-cooked fava beans. It’s a stew. It’s dark brown, and it’s very often flavored with cumin and coriander and olive oil, and maybe chopped tomatoes and cucumber and eaten with the pita bread. So these are the must, must haves.

The Pressure Cooker:

Well, food websites that I go to back and back again are Food52, The Kitchn, and Bon Appetit. I always go there if I need a basic recipe. As for food bloggers, they are endless. I’ve discovered so many talented food blogs and food bloggers around. I’m going to say a couple of the Australian ones that I’ve discovered here.

Who do you follow on Pinterest, Instagram, Facebook or Snapchat that make you happy?

I’m not big on Snapchat yet. I’m still trying to figure out how to work, how that works, but I’ve started following a few people and I do enjoy following very little video stories. I love following Local is Lovely, which is a wonderful local blogger here called Sophie Hansen that lives in regional New South Wales. Their stories and photos and events always make me so happy and make me actually want to move to the countryside, because she just focuses on the local growers and the local farmers and everything that this beautiful land has to offer, which always really, really makes me happy and makes me want to explore more of what Australia has to offer.

What is the most unusual or treasured item in your kitchen?

Actually, this is a funny story, but when I first came here for the first year, I started trying to collect all the things that I need in my kitchen from around Australia, and there were two things that I could not find anywhere that I was used to use back home. So when I went back to visit, I carried them back with me in my luggage, which is one, my rice washer. It’s just a bowl with slits down the side that you can easily wash rice in without it falling through. So it’s very thin slits and it’s a very simple thing, but it just saves me so much time washing my rice, and rice is such a big thing in Egyptian cooking. So that was something I had to bring back. And the other thing was the tool we use to hollow out vegetables for stuffing. It’s a really thin, long tool, and I couldn’t find it anywhere. So these two things are, they’re very precious and I guard them all the time and make sure I pack them first whenever we move.

Name one ingredient you used to dislike but now you love.

So many, because my mother used to always try to feed us all the wonderful Egyptian food, and we’d just say, “Oh, I don’t like eggplant,” or I don’t like one other very popular dish in Egypt is called Molokhia which is… I mean looking at it, you’d probably think it’s gross because it’s basically a green, slimy soup, and it’s not very appetizing, but I cannot have enough from it now. And I go specially, I trek out to the western suburbs, to the Middle Eastern grocers to buy it specially frozen so I can have it often. I used to make fun of my mom because she could have it every day, and I was just very grossed out by it, but now, I’m just completely addicted to it. I love it.

What are a few cookbooks that make your life better?

Definitely Ottolenghi cookbooks. I use them like a resource. It’s just like an encyclopedia for how to cook vegetables well. He knows his vegetables. He’s tested every sort of method there is and he always gives you the final verdict. So that, for sure, and I do have the Cairo Kitchen cookbook with me from back home, which is written by an Egyptian who opened a restaurant by the same name. So that has lots of classic and slightly modernized versions of our classic Egyptian dishes. I love having that whenever I need a quick tip on how to make something that I miss, I go for that.

On Keeping Posted with Noha:

Definitely Instagram, I’m quite active on there and use it to also do micro posts because I don’t always have time to do full blog posts anymore, but I try to keep every other day, at least, on Instagram with a bit of an update, a bit of a story, anything like that.

Posie grew up on a farm that is just over 600 acres where here family had access to the freshest of milk, eggs, and harvests from their well-attended garden. On her blog, 600 Acres, is where she shares some of her memories as well as the new things she is cooking and trying in places far from her home. Posie had worked as a food writer and editor for Tasting Table, Food52, King Arthur Flour and she contributes to Sift Magazine.

I am so pumped to have Posie Harwood of 600 Acres here on the show today.

(*All photos below are Posie’s.)

On Growing Up on a 600 Acre Farm:

I look back and I think how lucky I was because we grew up drinking raw milk and my mom made everything from scratch. We didn’t have chips or any of that stuff. But I never felt like, “Oh man, I feel so deprived.”

When I got older and people started talking about organic food and all that kind of stuff, to me, I always thought, “What else is there?” That’s what I’d always known. Now I realize how lucky that is. Some people have to learn that or seek it out. So, it was a really cool experience. I think it is responsible for what I ended up doing.

On Her Interest in Cooking:

My mom, she cooked every night and we always had family dinner, but she is an incredible baker. She always made bread for scratch. Just watching her, I learned a lot of the things I’d love to make and cook and bake. And I also think I just watched her have that natural rhythm in a household and picked up on that.

I never went to culinary school. I didn’t start working in food until a little while after college. So, I just always knew that was what I wanted to do. And not even what I wanted to do. I just felt like, “What else is there?” That is just in me. I feel I don’t have a choice. I have to.

On Leaving the Farm:

I’d spend a decent amount of time in spaces away from home. And then, going to college. I went to college in New Jersey actually and then I moved to Manhattan. I think New York took a lot of getting used to for me. I am really not a city person. I love New York. I think it is an amazing place to live and there is lots of food.

But I have always missed open space and fresh air. I know I won’t stay in New York forever. That’s always been a hard thing to just get used to. It is a pro and a con. It is an exciting, huge place. But sometimes I want to speak to no one for the next four hours, but you can’t when you are in New York. It is an adjustment. It is always a little bit of a balance. Now I work for a company in Vermont. So, fortunately, I get to spend a lot of time up there, which is a really nice balance.

On a Dish That’s Special to Her:

I guess I would have to say baking is my one main love. I feel like the first thing that ever really made me excited about food was baking bread. As I said, my mom, we never had store bought bread. She makes everything from scratch. My favorite thing is just white sandwich bread that she makes. It is the most delicious.

When it would come out of the oven we had all my sisters waiting just like rabid animals and she would cut off the loaf, the heel, and give it to one of us and we spread it with butter, which we always would have because we had cows. And she would churn it. So it was this really bright yellow Jersey cow butter and she packed it in these little ramekins. So, she would take a big swipe and put it on the bread and eat that.

That is the ultimate, that is the best thing. Now, every time when I bake bread, which is a lot, I am always making just that white sandwich bread loaf. And I am like, “Ah, this is heaven.” The thing is it is so easy to make. I think a lot of people are intimidated by yeast bread, which I feel like it is the kind of thing if you make yourself do once, it is totally magical and you realize, “Oh, okay, that is actually easier than so many recipes cooking- wise.” I mean, what are there? There’s like three, four ingredients. It just is all a matter of touch and just getting used to what it feels like, bread dough, and how it should feel.

The Pressure Cooker:

I love Smitten Kitchen. I love Food52, former employee, I have to say that. I also love The King Arthur Blog where I work now because it is incredibly informative, super good step-by-step baking. If you ever want to learn how to bake, or frost a cake, or make sourdough, check it out.

Who do you follow on Pinterest, Instagram, Facebook or Snapchat that make you happy?

Meghan is a passionate, self-taught home cook who recently moved from Portland, Oregon, to the Seattle area and spent most of her childhood in Alaska. While she tries adopting adult skills like meal planning and healthy eating, she balances the boredom by being creative in the kitchen mixing new drinks and discovering new places.

I am so psyched to have Meghan of Fox and Briar joining me here today.

(*All photos below are Meghan’s.)

On Growing Up in Alaska:

It’s a really unique place. It’s not like anywhere else. And I think that now that I’m an adult, I appreciate how beautiful and how different it is. But it’s awesome to have so much nature and empty space around you. But also, it can be a little bit isolated sometimes, because you have to pretty much fly to get out of Alaska. That’s sort of the dual-sided thing about living in Alaska.

On What Got Her to Start Cooking:

I think it’s been really a process and a journey over the years. When I went to college, I started cooking more. And at the time, the Internet was very different than it is now. I would go on the Internet on forums and find recipes and try them out. It kind of blew my mind. Every time I tried something new, like I can make my own teriyaki sauce, it’s not in a jar, or whatever. It kind of just surprised me and gave me the sense of accomplishment.

I can’t think of a specific time where it really changed for me. It’s always been evolving over the years.

On Teaching Herself How to Cook:

I just would get an idea of something I wanted to try. I’m the kind of person that sort of ruminates on things for a really long time before I try them. So I might have had an idea floating around in my head like, “I should really figure out how to do this.” And then finally one day, I’m at the store, and I’ll see the ingredient, and I’ll just buy it. So that’s usually what would happen. It would just strike me to learn, and then I would do it.

On a Dish That is Special to Her:

It’s a roasted chicken. When I moved to Portland, I was very, very poor. Sometimes I only had $20 to buy my groceries for the week. And so at that time, I had never ever made a whole chicken before. I knew that it was a budget-friendly thing. So one day, I found a really good sale on chickens, and I was like, “Okay, I’m going to do this.”

I roasted the chicken with the vegetables on the bottom. I felt like the coolest person. I was like, “I can’t believe I did that. That is so amazing.” It tastes incredible, and it’s inexpensive. And it’s also impressive. You can serve it to guests, and they’ll think that you’re really cool and on top of things. And then after that, I started roasting chickens often all the time. It’s something I do every few weeks. It depends on the weather. I think it’s something everyone should know how to do if you eat meat.

I have the recipe on my blog. It’s really not hard. I think I adopted it from Ina Garten and her recipe. It’s just incredible. It meant a lot to me because of the extensive accomplishment I got from it and because of the time in my life. It sort of represented me becoming an adult I guess. Also, it’s so good. It tastes delicious.

Who do you follow on Pinterest, Instagram, Facebook or Snapchat that make you happy?

I love Snapchat. It’s weird. I didn’t think I was going to like it, but I really do. And I love following Liz from The Lemon Bowl on Snapchat. Her snaps are always really entertaining and fun to watch. On Instagram, there’s so much cool stuff on Instagram. TheFeedFeed is really good. There’s one called Paper Apron. She’s a food stylist. And her photos are just awesome. I love her photos. So she’s on Instagram Paper Apron.

Facebook, I don’t really follow a ton of people.

What is the most unusual or treasured item in your kitchen?

I would have to say my KitchenAid, because it was my grandmother’s KitchenAid. And it’s almost as old as me. I think I was a baby when she bought it. And then when she passed away, my mom got it. And then when my mom moved across the country, she gave it to me. So I have it now. It’s like 30 years old, and it still works. Amazing.

Name one ingredient you used to dislike but now you love.

I used to be super picky. I used to hate so many things. And I’m still kind of picky, but I’ve really come around. I would say, weirdly, mushrooms. I used to hate mushrooms. I’d pick them out of everything. And now, I cook with them pretty often. I don’t know if I would go so far as saying I love them, but I like them a lot.

What are a few cookbooks that make your life better?

I used to have a lot of cookbooks, and I don’t have very many anymore. But one cookbook that had a big influence on me especially when I was in my early 20s and I was really learning how to cook was the Everyday Food Cookbook. I think it was called Fast and Fresh or something like that. It was arranged by season. And all the recipes are pretty simple, not a ton of ingredients. I learned a lot from that cookbook. I still have it. So that’s one that had a big influence on me.

What song or album just makes you want to cook?

I always have music on in my house pretty much every minute of the day. I really listen to a lot of Pandora. I will listen to Alabama Shakes or The Black Keys or something like that.

From 2006 to 2008, Cathy made a commitment to stay away from eating out in restaurants, having street food and take out, so she could explore other avenues of not eating out. She wrote a book about her experience called, The Art of Eating In. More recently, Cathy published a cookbook that looked into her mother’s home cooking roots called, The Food of Taiwan. In addition to her writing, Cathy has been interviewing guests on her weekly podcast, Eat Your Words, on Heritage Radio Network since 2009.

On Committing to Not Eating Out in New York:

It was a series of frustrations, like a bad restaurant meal here and there. Who hasn’t had that and then felt like, “Gosh, I could make something much better. Let me just figure out how to get into the habit of it.” I think that’s the hard part, is getting into the habit of it. It’s a routine switch rather than like a food or…I think it’s eating preference for many people. So that happened. And then at the same time I wanted to start a food blog. At this time, 2006, most of the websites and blogs that I saw were all about restaurant gossip, the hottest new chef, this opening, that closing, and all that stuff.

I wanted to do something different because I didn’t think that food has to be about the industry of restaurants necessarily, which is fun, but I also didn’t have the budget for it, too. Who does? When you’re young and you’re into food and you drop $50 plus on a meal. So I decided to make my blog about home cooking. And then I want to give myself a challenge and give the blog something new to talk about.

On Things She Had to Get Used to With This Project:

Well, the social dilemmas of not eating out in New York were actually some of the most fun adventures that I had. But you have to try to bring people together in a communal situation that doesn’t have to do with restaurants. So that meant for me at the time, potlucks, dinner parties. And then I got really into throwing cook-offs and going to them and participating in all sorts of community events. There were supper clubs and all these really fun, amazing, community events to do. So that became my social life, and I met a lot of my friends through those.

On Dumpster Diving:

I wanted to explore all the ins and outs of what not eating out in New York meant. I was interested in foraging in the park. I learned that many people were doing this, gathering dandelion greens for a salad and this and that. I also heard about freeganism. The concept is basically reusing.

So if you have ever picked up some books that you saw on the street or a chair, this is pretty much like that, except its good food that is being wasted by a supermarket or maybe it’s a restaurant or something like that. But for the most part the freegan circles that I ran into and explored and went on walks and trash diving, it was supermarkets and also bakeries, too. Bakeries have so much leftover at the end of the day. If you walk into a nice bakery and you see all those bagels or croissants or something, at the end of day, they’re going into a dumpster.

On Her Book, The Art of Eating In:

I was writing the blog, Not Eating Out In New York, for a couple of years when I got approached by agents. And at that point I didn’t have an idea for a book. Cookbook didn’t seem quite right, but the agent wanted me to write a memoir, but I didn’t really have the story yet. I felt like I was just getting into it, I was just learning about all these interesting communities like a freegan. So, I wasn’t quite there yet. I really sat on the idea for about a year or so until I began writing this book.

It was great. It was definitely written almost in real time too, but it pushed me to explore more folks who were doing really interesting things with food.

On What She Enjoys About Eating In:

I think that people have this misconception like it’s really lonely and it’s sad and they have this image of a person in their small insufficient kitchen with their insufficient cookware and so forth. So to get started, I would have a dinner party with a few good friends who you don’t mind just getting a little messy in the kitchen with, and maybe messing up some dishes with.

And you’ll see it’s a lot of fun. And what will happen usually is that it becomes this domino effect and your other friends will want to host the dinner next, and then, you will go from there. You’ll want to also improve upon something that you made last time. So it has an infectious quality to it. I think that’s a fun way to really get into cooking.

The funny thing is that the habit actually is easier once you’re cooking more often because you have not only just more know-how about what works when you’re cooking, but you have all these leftover odds and ends in your fridge. It actually becomes easier to just heat up that rice and then make fried rice with half a head of broccoli and something else rather than order out. So convenience, it can actually happen more often when you’re cooking.

On Her Book, The Food of Taiwan:

It took a long time, a lot longer than I thought. So The Food of Taiwan I think is something that a lot of folks who are interested in food would find super delicious and interesting. All the flavors that go into this wonderful tropical island and all the cultures that have contributed to it is really interesting. It’s where my mother grew up. But growing up and even to this day as a young person in New York, little is talked about with regards to Taiwan and especially Taiwanese food.

When I was shopping this book around originally, this was in 2011. In fact, a lot of awkward conversations would arise when people just didn’t really know what Taiwan was or where it was or why we should talk about the food of Taiwan, like, “How is it different from other Chinese food?” I would hear all the time, and I’m like, well, people are starting to understand a little bit more about the different regions throughout Asia, not just in China, and it’s also catching on in restaurants.

You see people getting into Thai food, you see people getting into Korean food, you see all sorts of niches. So it took a lot of convincing and a lot of patience and perseverance, but finally we made it happen.

On The Hardest Part About Writing The Book:

The hardest part for me was choosing about 100 recipes that I felt would really exemplify Taiwanese food. Because I don’t really have much of a precedent to go on. This is why I was hoping it would be the most comprehensive English language cookbook about Taiwanese food. I have seen some cookbooks in Taiwan, of course, but they tend to be street foods or home style foods, and I wanted to combine both home style and street food to show what is really celebrated on the island right now in food.

That was really difficult for me to whittle it down to 100 recipes and what’s the right one and all that stuff, and then of course, write all the recipes for it. My favorite part, of course, was writing the intro and the culture and the history lessons in it.

On What a Traditional Taiwanese Meal Would Look Like:

Taiwanese are actually really seasonal and they take pride in local specialties and seasonal specialties. So it really depends on the time of the year. For instance, people love really fresh, pure and not overly seasoned specialties like fresh bamboo shoots. You wouldn’t want to mess with that with too much sauce or anything like that. You just want to taste that purity of the wonderful ingredient.

Or it could be bitter melon, for instance, something really pure. So I think that to harmonize with the meal, you want one really shining star vegetable like that on the plate. And I would say that you would want a nice rich heavy meat. There’s a lot of pork belly used in Taiwan and they do it very, very well. I would do like a red braised pork belly, nice little dish. You would also typically serve that with something a little sour and piquant, like maybe some pickles, pickled cabbage, for instance, nice little crunch and contrast.

And then I would do maybe a more simmered, braised dish. So three-cup chicken is really great or three-cup squid, which is similar. And this is a clay pot simmered dish with lots of ginger, garlic, and chilies and basil at the end. With those three things, I think you can have a wonderful meal, just right there.

On Some Common Ingredients in Taiwanese Cooking:

I think that one thing they do have a lot of is little fried shallots, which is an excellent garnish. They’re crunchy and they add a little savory topping to anything. It could just be a pile of sauteed greens. Sprinkle those on or some crushed peanuts would do a similar trick. White pepper is pretty widely used in dishes and five-spice powder, but that’s more to marinate things or cook into a stew. Aside from that, there’s really not that many crazy ingredients. This is not a too heavily spiced cuisine, it is not ultra spicy, it is not ultra sweet, you don’t need all these crazy tastes. So it’s pretty accessible.

On Her Podcast:

Heritage Radio Network is a wonderful nonprofit podcast radio station. At first it was just a really random outgrowth of Heritage Foods USA. And our station was and still is at a little converted shipping container in the backyard of Roberta’s Pizza in Bushwick, Brooklyn. So over the years, that little shipping container has gotten heat and air conditioning. We have also become an actual nonprofit and we have many more shows than what was the case when the station began in 2009. I think there were like five shows.

I happened to be a guest Snacky Tunes with Greg and Darin Bresnitz. And then I had this idea for a show. After one conversation, it just happened and it’s been going since. It’s been really fun. I find it a great way to talk to people.

On Some of Her Favorite Podcast Episodes:

One of my favorite heroes in food Sandor Ellix Katz joined us for an episode. He wrote, The Art of Fermentation and Wild Fermentation. He’s just such an amazing brain. It was so great to get him on air. So definitely check that out. And I really enjoyed interviewing an old female restaurateur legend named Nora Pouillon, and she opened the first certified organic restaurant in the 70s. She was just a real pioneer in the food movement. So it was lovely to have her on air. She talked about her memoir.

In the past, the show has taken so many twists and turns. So nowadays I focus on food and books as the premise. But in the past, I used to focus on food and dating. So if you scroll down throughout the archives, you’ll see some fun ones.

Who do you follow on Pinterest, Instagram, or Facebook or Snapchat that make you happy?

There are so many Twitter accounts out there and they always make me happy when people are joking about this and that. Lucky Peach has some good posts. I’ll give them that credit for it and they have some great photos too. So let’s say Lucky Peach.

What is the most unusual or treasured item in your kitchen?

Well, I do have these old molds that you’re supposed to put mooncakes in and I love them. I don’t really use them because they’re beautifully hand carved wooden molds with all of these ornate patterns. They would show up on a mooncake on the surface. I actually tried to use them but the dough gets stuck, but I love having them around. I usually put something inside and just leave it there, but yeah, they’re just beautiful old cooking tools.

Name one ingredient you used to dislike but now you love.

For me that would be cheese. I am still trying to like many types of cheese. So the stinkier, the blue cheese, I’m not quite there yet. But since my 20s, I’ve been trying to eat more, trying to like more cheeses. And I know that this is crazy when it comes to most of the foodies that I know. It’s always been my Achilles heel, not really having a taste for cheese growing up. I don’t know why.

What are a few cookbooks that make your life better?

I love Marcella Hazan’s Essentials of Italian Cooking. I love Elizabeth Andoh’s Washoku, home style Japanese cooking. I learned so much from these books. They’re so comprehensive and they take such a deep dive into all these classic recipes from a culture that I didn’t grow up eating. I definitely love eating. So those are some really great staples. But on that similar note, I love to collect really great books about fill-in-the-blank regions. I have a really great book about Portugal right now, I have a great book about Senegal, all through the lens of food. So bring it on. Every single country I want to collect a cookbook of.

What song or album just makes you want to cook?

Lately, I’ve been listening to lot of Latin Boogaloo, so I will say Joe Bataan’s Riot! right now. It’s just so much fun, it’s groovy, 60s Latin, New York jazz. It’s awesome.

On her blog, Amanda shares food stories and recipes with the hope to inspire us to realize that the best meals are those made with fresh seasonal and simple ingredients. She believes that food doesn’t have to be fancy nor does it require expensive equipment. Amanda is also the author of Smitten with Squash, her cookbook with 80 original recipes on the squash family.

On Learning How to Cook:

There were some things that I just watched Grandma do, like my Grandma made the best loaves of bread. I never rolled them out with her, or kneaded, or anything like that. But I always ate what came from it and it was always the same and it was always so good. I could smell the yeast coming from her oven and things like that. So I think it was definitely a little bit of both. Some watching, some helping. With my other Grandma, she makes lefse every year, which is a Norwegian specialty, and I did help her, from rolling the balls to then putting it on the hot iron to getting it real thin, all of those little things, I did do with her.

It wasn’t really until about six years ago, I was living in Wisconsin and I moved back to Minnesota because I did grow up here. But moving into the Twin Cities, there were so many more farmers markets, so much more of a farm to table movement and just interesting food. I had never really taken the time to learn about or experience and so, I had this thing where I’d go to the market and every time, I would pick a new fruit or a new vegetable or even a cut of meat that I had never cooked with before. And I said, “We’re going to experiment. There is no judgment here. Just let the creativity flow,” and that is really kind of how my blog started too. It really forged this passion for telling the real story behind real food and real food recipes and it never gets boring. Because there is always something new to learn.

On Her Food Heroes:

There is so much inspiration that we are so fortunate to have because of the Internet. Years ago, it was just cookbooks which I still am inspired by today. But there is so much content out there and beautiful work being done all across the world. It’s eye opening every single day, and so when I think of my own cooking and who has inspired it a lot, I think of some of my favorite blogs like Lindsey of Dolly and Oatmeal, and Sherrie from With Food and Love, and Sarah Kieffer from The Vanilla Bean Blog.The way she is with baking and her precision and her beauty, you can’t look at it and not be inspired.

And then I think, even just typical sites like The Kitchn and Food52 have, whether it’s new ways of doing things or new ingredients that they are coming up with ideas for, and just the way that they look at food really inspires me.

I also have to say too, like even traditional people, I mean, I think Martha Stewart is phenomenal and she has gone through how many decades and not only evolved with but kept her brand. I only wish that I could throw a dinner party like her. Every little touch she does is really something special. And she takes the time to do it. I think that that’s part of what I love too and the change in me is that, cooking is an experience and I wrote about this on my blog. It’s much more than just for your health or for just putting it on the table. It evokes emotion, it can change mood, it can bring conversation. It’s just a beautiful thing.

On How Her Gluten Allergy Impacted Her Cooking:

So I have had quite a few autoimmune issues since I was young and still kind of battle it. But we finally figured out that one of the main stressors and causes was an intolerance to gluten. It was causing severe headaches and rashes and different things like shingles that I got when I was in eighth grade. I mean just very odd things, and finally, one doctor suggested that I stop eating gluten and it was basically like a miracle. Within three weeks, I was much, much better.

And at first, it was daunting. It was like, “What? You’re telling me I have to give up all of these foods that I love and I have to kind of relearn how to cook? How am I going to eat out?” All that type of stuff. And I can say today, that I would not probably be here sitting and talking to you if that had not happened, because what it did was inspire me to say, “Okay, here is what I can have. Let’s embrace this,” and what happened was it opened my eyes to all these new foods that I had never tasted or nothing that I grew up with, whether it be gluten-free grains like millet and sorghum, or teaching myself how to make flat bread that’s made from chickpea flour known as socca.

And to really too start to look at different cultures because, a lot of other cultures don’t use as much wheat or they use it in different ways, and so there are a lot of cultural things too that really were like, “Wow, this is good. I’ve been missing this for all these years?” And what I also started to realize was that most real food, that’s grown from the ground, plants, lean proteins and meats that are grown in a humane way, fruits, nuts, seeds, all those things are naturally gluten-free anyways.

It’s most of the processed food where the problem comes in. It made me feel good to get that burst of energy in the kitchen. And I wanted to share that with other people. Because as I was going along, I was meeting all these farmers or these artisans that were doing this really cool stuff that it didn’t matter if you were gluten-free or not. It was just really good stuff.

On Some Good Sources for Learning How to Cook with a Gluten Allergy:

It’s funny you ask that, because I had someone message me the other day. Their friend had just found that she was gluten-free. She was like, “Where do they start? How did that work?” And my first resource and still someone that I truly love and really think is such a benefit for the gluten-free community is Shauna from Gluten Free Girl, and her and her husband started a blog before gluten-free had really even been talked about. He was a chef and I read her book which was called, Gluten-Free Girl. It was more of almost a documentary but then also education on her whole transition, and it made me feel so much better. Like, “Okay, my world is not coming to an end. A, I feel so much better and now there is this whole new world of food that I get to explore,” and that was super, super helpful for me.

The other one, I don’t know if she blogs anymore. But her site is still very active. But Gluten-Free Goddess. There are so many beginner, basic recipes that will make you feel less intimidated, and that was really powerful for me too.

On Her Book, Smitten with Squash:

Smitten with Squash was published in July of last year. I was approached by the publisher who, they kind of do these, one book a year basically on a Midwestern fruit or vegetables that you love or that you’re very passionate about and the growing of it and history, because it is a historical publisher that publishes the cookbook. It’s the Minnesota Historical Society Press. They contacted me and were like, “You know, give us a few of your ideas, write a proposal around it. We’ve got a few others in mind.”

And I had always liked squash but what was interesting to me about squash, a couple of things is that, living here in Minnesota, our growing season is rather short. And squash, the family of squash between winter squash and summer squash, you can eat locally almost all year round here. Because summer squash is so abundant and then winter squash, you can store it for up to six months, and that will last you almost until summer squash is starting to arrive again. I thought that that was really neat because I do try to base my recipes off seasonal eating, because I feel like that’s when food tastes the best and you can become creative with what looks good at the market and things like that.

The other part that was really cool to me was that squash really is a part of every culture in one way or another and there aren’t very many foods that are like that. And so I just started formulating this idea about doing my whole book on squash and they accepted the idea.

There is 80 original recipes. There are about 40 summer squash recipes and then 40 winter squash recipes. And you’ll see everything from sweets to appetizers to pickles to main dishes, vegetarian to Paleo to kind of everything in there because it is so versatile.

The other real passion behind it is, you know how there are those foods that you had when you were young and you think like, “Oh my gosh, I do not like this because, this is probably the only way you can make it or this is the way I always see it served and I can’t stand this.” And when people talk about it, they are like, “Oh, yeah, well my mom made it, acorn squash. She baked it in a pan with some water and then when it came out she put butter and brown sugar on it. It’s just not good.” And I wanted to change that. I wanted to give people new ideas for what to do with summer squash in stuff like brownies or cake or things like that.

If you’re looking for a wonderful vegan site, Abby from The Frosted Vegan has just a great way with words and she is one of those people that makes things very easy to understand. I love too, if you’ve never glanced over the blog, Green Kitchen Stories, just beautiful photography and wonderful, nourishing, healthy food that never loses flavor and is exactly what I love to do, which is cooking seasonally.

Who do you follow on Pinterest, Instagram, or Facebook or Snapchat that make you happy?

Well, on Instagram, I love following The Fauxmartha. She has her little girl that she posts pictures of, but her food scenes are just so incredible and simple yet they just make me want to start cooking. That is something that is obviously what we all aspire to do. Another friend, her blog, it’s called Sunshine and Sea Salt. And she is just a real good friend and is an amazing recipe developer as well, but her words that she writes on Instagram are almost like sometimes blog posts. They are just beautiful. Oh, Ladycakes too is a really fun one to follow along with, and I love following her. Those are a few of my biggest inspirations.

What is the most unusual or treasured item in your kitchen?

My most treasured, the one that I use the most that like, if you could only keep three things from your kitchen, would be my Le Creuset dutch oven because they are just workhorses. They do everything that you could ever want, and then I used to think it was strange that my mom gave me my grandma’s silverware and now, I love it and I use it in so many of my photographs, and it really means a lot to me when I see it. And then, thirdly, are some of my thrift finds that I find while I’m out. One of those is this real old baker’s scale. You’ll see it in a couple of my posts and on my Instagram but they just don’t make things like that anymore.

Name one ingredient you used to dislike but now you love.

Ricotta cheese. I used to not like the texture. I only really had it in lasagna and I prefer cottage cheese over it in lasagna and that’s what formulated this dislike. Now, I think it is so great whether that’s baked with lemon and olive oil and herbs for an easy appetizer, or on salads. My favorite thing too is to put it into desserts where typically, you might use yogurt or something like that. It creates such a soft texture and moist, rich, just kind of like cake and it’s really a fabulous ingredient. But I thought I hated it. Now, I love it.

What are a few cookbooks that make your life better?

Deborah Madison’s Vegetable Literacy is, I mean, that should definitely be in your kitchen because it’s all about cooking with families of plants and how they all go together. It’s just really simple but interesting recipes and I use that as not only a reference guide but something every week in my kitchen.

Another one that I think you just should have it is Joy of Cooking, because every single technique or question you ever had about food is in there. There are also vintage recipes and modern new ways of doing things which I think is really cool.

One of my newest cookbooks that I use a lot and that I love is Sheet Pan Suppers and it’s all different recipes and it’s not just suppers but things that you can make on a sheet pan and have so little clean up. Very little clean up, like a sheet pan is just another workhorse too. And it creates delicious meals.

What song or album just makes you want to cook?

I wouldn’t say it’s any particular album or anything, but 50s and 60s music, some of those classic kind of blues but like, pop hits too. They’re all so upbeat and all have such a happy tone. They don’t make you think too hard and that’s kind of what I always have on in my kitchen.

On What a Typical Day Looks Like:

Every day is very different. Either I am preparing for a class which usually means I am gathering vegetables, I am emailing farmers or I am buckling down and doing some writing, which happens often. So in those days, I hole up with the computer and a cup of tea and nail out maybe three or four hours of time to sit and write or work on other deadlines and things like that. I also just launched a bitters line. So now, my days are interesting and they have new bitters making tasks in them as well.

It’s pretty all over the place. I am a procrastinator. So my writing usually is fit into the very last time slot between when it needs to be turned in. I try, I really try to set up times where I have a morning writing schedule or routine, but I am not having much luck with that.

On Food Preservation and Canning:

I think my mom would vote me the least likely to be domestic leaving high school and into college. But I really took it on and moving to Brooklyn, moving to New York in 2008, the stock market broke and I was trying to start freelancing. I was even applying for other jobs and I felt like my budget didn’t really match. My capabilities for spending money didn’t match the opportunities that I would have liked to spend money. So I really felt like it was time to get creative and if I like jam, maybe I should learn how to make it. If I wanted pickles in the house, then I better figure out about making those because buying a $10 jar every week isn’t going to work out any longer. So, I stumbled into it via the food community, going to the farmer’s market, getting a CSA.

I had some great mentors with food preservation. I found a mentor in New York City. I now live in Austin, Texas. I moved back about five years ago. But I found a mentor in New York, Eugenia Bone is her name, and I am sure everyone is familiar with her, but she wrote a book around the time that I was researching called, Well-Preserved. And that’s a really wonderful guide to folks in food preservation, and she was kind enough to let me into her home after I invited myself over and decided to ask some questions. She was a great mentor and she actually wrote the foreword to my second book.

On Encouraging Home Cooks to Try Food Preservation:

I think, first of all, just knowing some basic science which you can read in just a few pages of either my book or a few resources that I have put forth in my book. Just understanding the science behind it, you will understand very early on then that you are not going to kill your friends and family with a jar of jam, most likely. Similarly, you are not going to likely kill your friends and family with a jar of pickles either.

So, the things that we find very intimidating, it’s because we just don’t have the knowledge of how botulism bacteria is borne. My first canning experience was canning peach jam, and I was sure that the bubbles inside the jar were botulism spores or something. And it was just me not knowing that you couldn’t even see them if there were, but they can’t bloom in that environment.

We create safe products by following simple recipes and basic kitchen cleanliness like don’t pet the dog and then shove stuff in your jar, rather than try to achieve sterility. That’s just so not possible because oxygen is all around us. We are breathing and everything travels in the air. So, really, I just try to remind people to relax. So if you prep the fruit or cut up the veggies the night before, and then the next day you actually make the thing, those are the most practical and simple recipes to do because it really just cuts it up into reasonable chunks of time rather than saying, “Hey, you have three hours to work on this,” which many of us often don’t.

On Some Good Resources for Learning More about Food Preservation:

I would definitely recommend both of Linda Ziedrich’s books, The Joy of Jams, Jellies and Other Sweet Preserves is one. And then, her other book, The Joy of Pickling. She is also one of my mentors. She reviewed the whole draft of my first book’s manuscript and really a great food preservation mentor. But her books are amazing, wonderful, small batch, really highlight the flavor in seasonal aspect of foods and you will not go wrong with her.

And then, a newer resource, not when I was actually getting started but I think you spoke recently with, Cathy Barrow of Mrs. Wheelbarrow. And she just wrote a beautiful book that has a lot of great information on pressure canning. In my book, I don’t really have a tutorial. I teach some classes on pressure canning, but I think it is so important to be able to put up your broths and stocks that you make, your bone broth and everything you are making nutritiously in your kitchen, to be able to store that on the pantry shelf versus in your freezer.

On Her Books:

The homemaking book was the first book. Came out in 2011. I moved to Brooklyn in 2008 and upon getting there, I was feeling like it was the final exam for everything I had learned post college and in my DIY. How do you grow stuff? How do you clean the house without toxic chemicals that cost money? And how to not let all the groceries, the farmer’s market goods that we got, go to the compost pile? I just felt like, “Oh my Gosh, I need some help here. And I think other people like me would like all the stuff pulled together.”

So I started the blog for Hip Girl’s Guide to Homemaking and just started putting stuff out there because there was another aspect of it for me that was very intriguing, and it was that I hadn’t been in the kitchen before in my post college years. I mean, as minimally as possible. I was just sort of, “Here I am. I am in the kitchen but not willingly.” And then I get to New York, and I am trying out making my own bread because gluten-free bread at that time, you bought a door stop if you were getting a loaf of gluten-free bread. So I was like, “I can make better than this for less than nine dollars a loaf for sure.” So I actually liked it, I liked being in the kitchen. I was wondering, “Is this okay. I am a modern young woman, empowered woman. Am I allowed to like being in the kitchen in terms of my feminist friends?” And the answer was yes, and a resounding yes from everyone all over.

I really wanted to explore that in the Hip Girl’s Guide to Homemaking that gender is not…to try to drop some of the previous attachments that we’ve had to the kitchen and to the home, in general, using a controversial word like homemaking to begin with. So, yeah, I really wanted to explore all of that stuff. Then the Kitchen book, turns out I had so much more to say about the kitchen because I myself had a rocky past with getting to a place where I felt comfortable and confident. So, I don’t think it happens overnight, but I definitely wanted to let people know how to go ahead and start getting used to the kitchen or get more kick ass in the kitchen.

The Pressure Cooker:

Which food shows or cooking shows do you watch?

I don’t watch any cooking shows because I don’t have a TV, and I am not really into television so much. But I’ve enjoyed some of the America’s Test Kitchen shows via the computer and all that.

What are some food blogs or food websites we have to know about?

I’d say that you would have to know about Food in Jars and you want to visit The Kitchn. Food52, I think, is another great aggregate site. And then, wellpreserved.ca. Those are my friends, Joel and Dana, that live in Canada. And then, there’s also Punk Domestics. I think that’s another great source and site for everybody to visit because it’s a great place where everyone’s recipes get pulled.

Who do you follow on Pinterest, Instagram, or Facebook or Snapchat that make you happy?

Well, I am really into the Dram Apothecary. Great feed and beautiful photos, and I am really into the style and design that they are doing, and I just love them. Of course, there’s Tuna Melts My Heart and he makes me pretty happy, and all the pets in the feed of my dog’s Instagram feed, she only follows pets. So just scrolling through the pets only feed is great.

What is the most unusual or treasured item in your kitchen?

I think the most treasured item I have in there is a Le Creuset baking dish that I bake my cakes in. It’s a white enameled Le Creuset that is a vintage one that has the little shell handles. And it’s beautiful, and I only paid $10 for it. I use it at least once a week if not more. And then, I really treasure my spatulas, my high heat rubber spatulas. That’s a weird thing to treasure I think, but I love them.

Name one ingredient you used to dislike but now you love.

I’d say cabbage, in general, because I make kraut now. I make that bacon cabbage salad that we talked about and yeah. I’ve just never really been into cabbage and now I love all the things that you can do with it.

What are a few cookbooks that make your life better?

I think The Flavor Bible is a great resource for folks. I consult it often. I am a Joy of Cooking girl and specifically, there are couple of editions that I am really into and following those recipes from the 1996 publication. I am really into that one.

And then, I also visit Eugenia Bones’ book often. It’s called, At Mesa’s Edge. She’s just got a lot of basic recipes in there but are really versatile, and I just love her work in general. She is a great resource.

What song or album just makes you want to cook?

I guess, just the artist, in general, is Patty Griffin. She’s got a song called, Making Pies, and that’s a very inspirational song.

On Keeping Posted with Kate:

Well, I am on all the platforms. Though, I think more often you can see what I am doing at the moment on Instagram.

Ali grew up in a home where cooking from scratch was the norm. After college, she enrolled in a cooking school and subsequently worked at various catering companies and restaurants. Ali’s two years in the Fork restaurant kitchen in Philadelphia where she became sous chef, was the experience that shaped what and how she cooks today. Apart from her blog, Ali writes a column, A Bushel and a Peck for Food 52, and contributes to the Baking Steel blog.

On Growing Up in a Home Where Cooking and Food was Valued:

I didn’t think anything of it growing up because it’s just what always was around. I think I did start thinking about it in high school a little bit because I went to a boarding school. I was a day student and my mom, my dad, my stepdad actually all taught at the boarding school. So I still came home at night but I often ate many of the meals in the dining hall, lunch of course but dinner too. It was just kind of the social thing to do when all of my friends were boarders. The breakdown was like 70% boarding, 30% day students. So I would eat a lot of the meals. I played sports, so after sports we’d go to the dining hall, have dinner and then every so often I would invite my friends over for dinner at my house. And they were always blown away, they were like, “What is this bread? You made this? What do you mean you made this? Like from a bread machine?” They just didn’t understand that, and this is just a bread that my mom would whip up all the time, it was just no big deal.

And just everything, I mean, it was just such a treat for them. And it was still a treat for me, I appreciated it but I had it all the time anyway, toast for breakfast, I had the meals on the weekends, and then I think I probably really started appreciating it when I was in college.

My senior year, I lived off campus with a roommate and so we were cooking a lot and that’s when I was calling my mom more for, “How did you make that chicken that I love?” And, “Why is this chicken so much better?” It was because my mom always used chicken thighs and not chicken breasts, and I would hear her say the thighs are more flavorful, but until I really cooked breasts and was like, “These aren’t good, there’s a difference.” Then I had all these questions for my mom and that’s when I really started recording the recipes and gathering the recipes that I loved.

On Her Interest in Cooking:

I was interested in what my mom was doing. I would say the extent of my help in the kitchen growing up was, she taught me how to make the salad dressing. So I would make the salad dressing, and I would assemble.

I remember always assembling up the Greek salad. She is 100% Greek, not from Greece but we’d make the Greek salad with Aunt Phylis’ salad dressing or this other dressing from the Chez Panisse Vegetables cookbook. I would chop up the shallots and macerate them in the vinegar, I would do that, I would set the table.

I loved baking so I would help make bread, and she had this other, in addition to this peasant bread that she would make all the time, she had this Bakery Lane Soup Bowl cookbook. And that was the sort of book that she always made these honey whole wheat loaves, or these oatmeal, brown sugar, and so I would make bread. That was it though until I was in college.

On Working in Catering Versus Restaurants:

I would say the catering company, there were two aspects when I was in the catering kitchen. We were doing prep all day, just prepping and prepping and I remember realizing, “Gosh this can be really tedious”. Because we would have to assemble over 100 Asian noodle nests, it’s just a lot of the same thing over and over again. I still learned a lot from the repetition and learning how to use like industrial saran wrap, you know wrapping trays to make sure nothing would spill in transport.

And even on the jobs, I would say there were still periods of intensity where you had to work quickly and get things out, and things that were tricky. I remember one job they were serving tuna and the chef had made whatever the contraption was that holds up the trays, he had turned it into sort of a warmer, and the tuna got totally overcooked. When he went to slice it every single piece of tuna was (overcooked) and this was supposed to be a raw seared tuna. It was just a disaster and so then there are the stresses that came along with that.

When I switched, I was working in the restaurant, I just realized it felt much more intense. Like when lunch service hit it was just an hour of just orders coming in, and then obviously the same thing at dinner and Sunday brunch too. I worked the omelet station for a year.

I just remember the omelet orders coming in, and then some of them being egg white and then just trying to get the timing right on all the six or eight pans in front, trying to get it right. Fork also had sort of a private room in the back, so then every so often at the same time as Sunday brunch you’d be doing omelets for the party. I remember never feeling so overwhelmed or so focused, but also stressed and just trying to manage so many things at the same time. That I felt was sort of the biggest difference.

On prep days at the restaurant in the morning, they’re still the same. We would make soup in these enormous pots and so there is cutting carrots, and onions, and so over and over and over again so the similar kind of repetition but it was in a different kind of way.

On How Working in a Restaurant Influenced the Way She Cooks:

I think first of all, the owner of the restaurant, Ellen, she was one of the first restaurants to open in an old city. And it was years before I got there but from the beginning her saying was, “Buy fresh, buy local,” so she for me was sort of the introduction. She introduced me to that kind of concept and Philadelphia has an incredible farm-to-table movement. I hate to use that word because it just sort of seems overused now but at the time I remember it was really new for me. I thought, “Oh, I didn’t know that people would really care about where these tomatoes came from. All over the menu every tomato was labeled from whatever farm it came from, and so that was really new to me.”

And I would see the farmers. I mean we would of course get deliveries from big wholesale companies, but the farmers would come and they would bring their goods and that was really, really cool to me to see. So that would be the first thing, and then I would say the Chef Thien, any chance he could, we would ride our bikes to Chinatown and we would eat lunch. There were three Vietnamese restaurants that he liked all in Philadelphia, and he would order different things at different, so I kind of learned what to order where. He opened my eyes to a whole world of food.

He loved Italian food, he loved French food and we would go to really nice restaurants. We would go to holes in the wall. He introduced me kind of to just the restaurants here in Philadelphia and what people were cooking but also, just watching him cook was such an incredible experience. Watching him breakdown three whole salmon – he would filet it and take out the bones, and then portion them into perfect six ounce pieces. Then to just see how he made all of his soups and how he would always talk about how soups were the money makers of the restaurant because it was just with all these ingredients that cost us nothing, and they would save everything, every single scrap of meat and vegetable would go into this big pot for meat stock.

And then just some of the foods he made, he made chicken curry that was so amazing. He would buy these fresh rice noodles in Chinatown at this one store called Ding Ho and he would just cut them up, and he would make this sauce with fish sauce and lime and just toss it with tons of herbs, and it was like I had never eaten that kind of food, that’s so fresh and just so fast. It was the most delicious thing in the world.

On Her Blog:

Blogs were totally new in fact I remember when a friend told me, I think I was maybe still working in restaurants, and I remember she said that she was going to start a blog and I thought, “That is the strangest thing I’ve ever heard. Who cares what you have to say? What are you going to write about?” And then, when I left the restaurant I said, “Okay, I would love to write about food and write about the things I’m discovering.”

There was a small newspaper in Philadelphia and I just walked into their office one day and said, “Do you have a food department?” And they didn’t, but they wanted one, so I just started writing for them.

I was discovering so much in Philadelphia or thinking back on the kind of experiences I had had for the past four years in the restaurants and catering companies and I was like, “I want to start recording this.” And the paper was so small I was discovering more things than I was able to put in the paper every week, and maybe some things were not appropriate to put in the paper, or just not inappropriate, but there wasn’t the right space, so that was sort of how I started. I thought, “Okay, well, I’ll start a blog so I can at least document what I’m doing in Philadelphia and finding and we’ll see how it goes.” I really didn’t care about it at all in the beginning. I would write an entry and hit post and publish it or whatever and then I would go off.

I didn’t care about posting anything to Facebook or Twitter or trying to drive traffic in the beginning. It was just a journal, and then we moved cross country so I kind of documented our cross country travels.

We’ve been in California for three years and then back to Virginia and I had two kids, and I was at home more, and I posted a couple of recipes and I remember just getting a really good response. Some of the comments were like, “You know I love your recipes,” or “This is the most delicious,” and I think one of them was this buttermilk blueberry breakfast cake and it was my mum’s recipe.

I love sharing family recipes. I love making people happy with food. This is really important to me. So I thought now I want to spend more time on my blog making the recipes really thoughtful, not necessarily foolproof but mostly tested before I publish them, and being there to respond to comments.

The Pressure Cooker:

Which food shows or cooking shows do you watch?

We cancelled cable a few years ago though we have Netflix. I watched recently, which I really loved, Chef’s Table, it’s a Netflix original series and it’s six episodes. I loved the one on Francis Mallmann he’s just such a character and it’s incredible food he cooks in this episode on this remote island in Patagonia, its amazing. And then the other one was on Dan Barber and it’s inspired me to read his book, The Third Plate.

What are some food blogs or food websites we have to know about?

I think everybody knows about Food52’s Genius Recipes column but I look forward to Kristen’s column, it’s so good every week, I don’t know how she does it.

One that I just discovered recently, there’s this cookbook called, Make The Bread buy the Butter and its by Jennifer Reese. Her blog is called Tipsy Baker and I just discovered it and I just love her writing style. She’s just funny. It’s a new discovery for me, I’ve been telling everybody I know.

Who do you follow on Pinterest, Instagram, or Facebook or Snapchat that make you happy?

Okay, Snapchat somebody needs to explain to me, I think it’s a sign that I’m way too old. I have no idea how to use it.

I have to be honest I feel like I hardly pay attention to Facebook anymore, I’m terrible. I don’t check Facebook.

Pinterest, I love Pinterest, I think I follow a lot of people but I don’t actually go and look at my feed.

I was very late to the Instagram game. It’s so simple and I don’t know why it took me so long but I like it because it’s simple. I really love the format. I follow a lot of people. There’s a photographer his name is Eric Wolfinger and I love his stuff, I always have. The books that he photographs I find myself always going back to.

What is the most unusual or treasured item in your kitchen?

One was a wedding gift, it’s a wooden baguette shaper, it’s really long, it extends the full length of my arm span, and it was a wedding gift, my Godmother, she got it in France and I have no use for it because I could never make baguettes that long but the wood is beautiful. It has a nice finish so that’s hanging up. And then my aunt gave me this also enormous pizza peel that wouldn’t even fit in my oven, you’d have to have a wood burning oven, and I have that hanging up also.

Name one ingredient you used to dislike but now you love.

It may be fish sauce, I hope that’s not too obvious, but I remember the first time I was in Philadelphia in our little apartment and I remember a recipe called for fish sauce. I opened the bottle and I said, “This smells like dirty socks. I don’t understand how I can actually put this on my food, this is crazy.” And then, I did it because I thought, “I’m going to try it,” and I was like, “Wow, this is amazing!”

What are a few cookbooks that make your life better?

Chez Panisse Vegetables is probably one of the first cookbooks that my mum gave to me I think maybe when I graduated from college. It’s just something for every season. Part of it is because I do that column for Food 52 but part of it is just because I’m always getting a CSA, but that is a book I turn to over and over and over again. How to Be a Domestic Goddess, Nigella Lawson’s. I remember a friend gave it to me in college. There’s so much in that book, so much good content and she is such a good writer, and I love her voice and her stories.

What song or album just makes you want to cook?

This is going to be also so random too. I don’t know why, maybe because Philadelphia was when I really started cooking a lot but I would listen to Buena Vista Social Club over and over again. So if I hear that music I associate with being in the kitchen and that would make me want to cook.

On Keeping Posted with Alexandra:

I post and do all the things I’m supposed to do, I do a post and I post it to Facebook, I tweet, post it to Instagram, but I find social media exhausting and hard to keep up with. I prefer to just follow people by subscribing directly to their websites. I guess I’m kind of old school. I like getting an email when they post.

Hello! I'm Gabriel Soh, home cook, food enthusiast and your host of The Dinner Special podcast.
Everything here on The Dinner Special is an experiment, just like with cooking. Thank you for listening and being part of the adventure.